


Out of Sight, Out of Mind

by HappinessEscape (passicnfruit)



Series: A Number of Incredibly Un-Awe-Inspiring Logs of Kozume Kenma [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Bullying, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-15
Updated: 2014-08-15
Packaged: 2018-02-13 06:06:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2139918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/passicnfruit/pseuds/HappinessEscape
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As his grades rose and his parents granted him more freedom, Kenma began to shut himself in for longer and longer periods of time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of Sight, Out of Mind

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Hanamiya Backstory Headcanons](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/67731) by carpfish. 



> Believe it or not, part of this was inspired by a Hanamiya backstory headcanon. (The rest was inspired by my own, very real, selfish cowardice.) I wonder if I stuck too closely to the wording in some parts. The words just stuck in my mind, though, and I’m not a very clever person. I think it should be okay, though. Maybe. I hope.

Kenma had always been incredibly unremarkable. Aside from his feline-like eyes, he was never anything special. He was an ordinary cute kid, living in an ordinary two-parent home, getting just slightly above ordinary grades. He ate all the same food that the other kids at school ate, played all the same video games that everyone else in the neighborhood played, and visited all the same websites that his peers visited.

He didn’t mind this lifestyle. Blending into the background and avoiding recognition was always preferable to, say, standing out and being bullied or, worse yet, making fake friends.

Kenma had always been an observer. He was very rarely picked on, and the less he stood out, the less he was targeted. He examined how the bigger, richer, prouder students picked on the weakest of the students. He mentally noted how the teachers turned a blind eye. An intelligent child, perhaps a bit too intelligent for his young age, Kenma soon recognized that he was a bystander in these types of affairs, and acknowledged the idea that, perhaps, he was no better than the bullies or the teachers themselves.

Even though he’d reached this realization, however, he did nothing to fix what he regarded as wrong. He’d rather carry the guilt of not doing anything than do something and become prey. And so, he avoided conflict, allowing volleyball, studies, and video games to take up the entirety of his week (until Kuroo and his antics dragged him outside). As his grades rose and his parents granted him more freedom, Kenma began to shut himself in for longer and longer periods of time. He would never be without some type of electronic device, be it his phone, his PSP, his DS, his old GBA SP, his non-portable gaming systems, his mp3 player, or his laptop. Scroll, scroll, like, scroll, like, tag, reblog, scroll, scroll, tag, queue, scroll. Click on music, skip song, skip, skip, skip, rewind, turn volume down by two clicks, resume blogging. Open desk drawer to get snack. Stretch. Open up game launcher, new patch is up, update and wait. His parents and (very scarce) friends asked him if his eyes ever hurt from the constant exposure. Kenma didn’t mind it. In fact, he prefered it to anything else he did during the day, aside from sleeping, sometimes.

If he couldn’t (wouldn’t) do anything against the bullying he’d observed on a daily basis, he’d avert his eyes by gluing them to a handheld video game screen. Whether it was a role-playing dating simulator, an off-the-wall but high-budget popular franchise game, a moderately slow-paced farming life game, or even a ninety-nine yen side-scrolling phone application, he’d play it until he finished it (or got a better score on it than Kuroo, or got bored of it, or lost it somewhere in dark depths of his room). As long as it entertained him enough to distract him from his environment, he’d play it.

Out of sight, out of mind.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I’m kind of a coward.  
> Maybe.  
> I associate myself with Kenma a lot. More so than most other fictional characters (maybe Furihata or Asahi, sometimes), I think. (Maybe that’s just my headcanon Kenma?) I think he’s fun to write. He resembles Kuroko, I think, in some way or another, but for some reason, I don’t think I, personally, am too similar to Kuroko, or something. I guess we’re similar, if you tilt your head and squint.  
> I suppose that’s how it is with a lot of people, though.


End file.
